A record is a data structure for storing information related to an entity. The record comprises various data related to the entity. For example, the record for a customer may comprise data, e.g., a name of the customer, an official address of the customer, a residential address of the customer, a contact number of the customer, etc. It may be required to compare multiple records. For example, it may be required to compare the record of a customer ‘xyz’ and a customer ‘pqr.’ A visual comparison may be preferable or needed.
However, it may be difficult to compare the records if the records are placed one on the top of another with data of the records being displayed horizontally. Typically, if the data of the records are displayed horizontally and the records include many data then a user may need to scroll back-and-forth or up-and-down across the records to compare various data which might be inconvenient and time consuming. The records may be placed side-by-side in a vertical arrangement (e.g., in a card view) to obviate the above-mentioned problems. However, even if the records are placed side-by-side, like data of the records may not be in alignment. For example, the ‘residential address’ of the customer ‘xyz’ and the ‘residential address’ of the customer ‘pqr’ may not be in alignment or may not line up in a same row.
FIG. 1 illustrates some examples that may cause misalignment of the like data of the records, e.g., the misalignment of the like data of a record 101 (i.e., left card) and a record 102 (i.e., right card). Consider three cases.
Case 1: The record 101 includes a first name 101A and a last name 101C of the customer, while the record 102 includes a first name 102A, a middle name 102B, and a last name 102C of the customer. Therefore, the record 102 includes an additional field 102B (e.g., middle name) that is missing in the record 101 and it causes misalignment. Typically, due to misalignment the data (rows) of the record 101 and the corresponding data of the record 102 do not line up. For example, a ‘REGION’ data 101R and a ‘MASKED’ data 101M of the record 101 and the corresponding ‘REGION’ data 102R and the ‘MASKED’ data 102M of the record 102 do not line up in the same TOW.
Case 2: The record 101 may include two addresses, e.g., ADDRESS 1 and ADDRESS 2 whereas the record 102 may only include one address, e.g., ADDRESS 1 that can also cause misalignment.
Case 3: The data, e.g., ADDRESS 1 of the record 102 may include two levels of hierarchy (102H1 and 102H2) compared to the corresponding ADDRESS 1 of the record 101 that may also cause misalignment.
Misalignment may cause inconvenience when comparing the records as the like data of the records do not line up in the same row. Further, comparing the misaligned records (e.g., the record 101 and 102) may be time consuming.